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How to Make Milk Tea at Home for $1.20 a Cup (Mixue Dupe)

Duff walks into the warehouse with a $6.20 milk tea and reckons the same cup costs about $1.20 to make yourself. There is no trick to it. Four things go in the cup: cooked tapioca pearls, brewed black tea, creamer and fructose. Once the pearls are cooked, putting the drink together takes about a minute. Makes 1 x 700ml cup·4 ingredients·5 steps Shop Tapioca Balls 3kgShop Signature Black Tea Leaves 600gShop Best Creamer 1kgShop Fructose 5kg What goes into a $1.20 cup of milk tea? These are the amounts we use for costing a standard 700ml cup, taken from our own cost per cup breakdown. Brewed black tea (300ml), brewed at 80g of leaves per 4 litres of water Creamer (40g), which is what makes the tea milky and smooth Fructose (20g), adjusted to whatever sweetness you like Tapioca Balls (30g dry, about 60g once cooked) Ice How do I cook the tapioca pearls? This is the only step that takes real time, so start here. Bring water to the boil using 6 cups of water to 1 cup of Tapioca Balls, tip the pearls in and cook for 20 minutes. Turn off the heat and leave the pot covered for another 20 minutes. Strain the pearls, rinse them under cold water, then mix them through a sugar syrup or brown sugar syrup. Cook them fresh on the day, because pearls harden as they sit and lose their chew. How do I make the milk tea? 1. Add the pearls. Spoon as many cooked pearls into the cup as you want. This is your kitchen, so nobody is counting. 2. Pour in the black tea. Brewed and cooled black tea is the base of the drink, about 300ml for a 700ml cup. 3. Add the creamer. Around 40g is what turns brewed tea into milk tea, and it is what gives the drink the smooth body you get in shops. 4. Add the fructose. Start near 20g and move from there. 5. Fill with ice and mix. Stir or shake it through so the creamer and fructose are evenly spread before you drink it. Why is the sugar the part worth paying attention to? In the video Duff calls the sugar the real secret of bubble tea, and the reason is simple. When you order out, the sweetness is set for you in fixed levels. At home you pour the fructose yourself, so you decide exactly how sweet the cup is, and you can change it from one cup to the next without asking anyone. Does the $1.20 actually stack up? That is the figure Duff quotes in the video against the $6.20 cup he bought. If you want the line by line version, our costing page works out a classic milk tea with pearls at about $0.66 in ingredients, or about $0.97 once you add a 700ml cup, a lid and a straw, based on our publicly listed carton prices. Have a look at the full cost per cup breakdown or run your own numbers in the recipe cost calculator.